Nature Abhors a Vacuum
by Ayla Pascal
Summary: Snape wakes up one morning to find Hogwarts almost empty. The only other person there is Potter who insists that they're married.


**Author Notes: **Thank you to aigooism for the beta!

**Nature Abhors a Vacuum**

Snape had never liked Hogwarts much. His childhood memories of it were of crowds of malicious children teasing him, and his adult memories weren't that much better. It was at Hogwarts that Albus wove his own set of fettered chains around him to match those of the Dark Lord. Even after Albus's death, those chains remained weighty around his neck, whispering his failings to him over and over again.

* * *

Snape woke up panting. His eyes darted around the darkened room. Where on earth was he? Was this all some sort of ploy by the Dark Lord? As his heartbeat slowed down to a normal pace, Snape realised that he had fallen asleep in the Great Hall. He was sitting up on the High Table, except there was nobody else there. No fellow teachers, no students, no irksome pets... absolutely nothing. There was only the food on the table, untouched food. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. It was _never_ this quiet at Hogwarts. There was always some unruly child shrieking, or some cauldron exploding somewhere or a pet yowling in the distance.

"Hello?" His voice echoed in the large room.

There was definitely something wrong. It didn't feel like a ploy by the Dark Lord, but you never knew. One day he would be all fire and brimstone, and the next day, he would seem almost calm and normal. The Dark Lord was never predictable.

Snape scraped his chair back and strode across the room. He pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. It was cold. Very cold. That too was strange. It was never cold in Hogwarts.

Snape reached into his pocket and grabbed his wand. He wasn't going to be caught unaware in a situation like this. He held it in front of him as he walked down the corridor. As Snape rounded a corner, he stopped. There was a sound ahead of him. Faint footsteps that were growing fainter with each step. His fingers tightened around his wand. "Show yourself!" he ordered sharply.

The footsteps stopped. "Severus?"

Snape frowned. The voice sounded oddly familiar, but he didn't have time to think about it. The footsteps were coming closer to him. Suddenly, somebody threw themselves against him. Arms – very male arms – wrapped themselves around his waist and a face buried itself into his shoulder. "Unhand me!" Snape snapped as soon as he had ascertained that this wasn't some sort of threat. It was just a hug.

"Sorry," the person murmured as he stepped back. "I forgot how much you hated hugs. I'm so glad you're here. I thought I was stuck here by myself!"

Snape stared and then stared some more. "Potter?"

Potter raised an eyebrow in a gesture that was oddly reminiscent of Snape's own expressions. "You haven't called me that for years."

Was Potter crazy? Snape studied him carefully. He didn't seem crazy, but then again, Snape wasn't an expert. Potter did seem different though. Taller, possibly, but then again, Snape had never really taken much notice of Potter's height. Or maybe older. There were lines in Potter's forehead that he'd never noticed before. "I always call you that," Snape told him, his upper lip curled.

Potter's lips twitched. "No, you don't," he said. "Anyway, do you know where we are?"

"Hogwarts, obviously."

"I know that," Potter said sounding exasperated. "But why are we the only people here?" He tilted his head. "Do you feel that?"

Snape was taken aback. Was Potter insane? "Feel what?" he snarled.

"There's something wrong about this place," Potter told him.

Snape pressed his lips together. He did feel it, but he wasn't about to admit that to Potter.

"So you do feel it," Potter said. He gave a small smile. "Come on, Severus, you surely don't think you can fool me with that look after three years of being married." He turned around and began to walk away. "I think something's over here. I was going to have a look when I heard you calling out to me."

Snape stared after him. Did Potter say three years of _marriage_?

* * *

Hogwarts ended a few corridors away from the Great Hall. There was nothing. No whiteness, no darkness... just a void. Snape stood at the edge of the abyss and stared out. "The library should be down there," he said.

"Get away from there," Potter called out from behind him. There was a tremor in his voice.

"Why?" Snape asked as he reached an arm out. There was some sort of barrier up and as he pushed his hand through it, it felt like he was going through soft cheese. "We need to find out what this is."

"I know what it is," Potter told him. "And if you fall into that, you'll cease to exist."

Snape yanked his arm back and slowly turned around. "What are you wittering on about?"

"I know where we are." Potter suddenly looked very old.

"Feel free to share that information at any point," Snape said sarcastically.

"We're in a cursed painting," Potter said flatly. "And that is the edge of the painting. That's all that the painter painted of Hogwarts. Normally, there'd just be a small gap and we could step through to the next painting, but..." He shrugged. "A cursed painting is cut off from the normal world."

Snape looked over at the void. His mind couldn't seem to process it. He wanted to see something, anything there, but there was nothing.

"Your mind wants to skip over it," Potter continued.

"If you're so smart," Snape snapped, "then you'll be able to get us out of here."

"We've seen this at work before," Potter murmured. "It probably looks normal from the outside. Just an innocuous painting of a bowl of fruit or something."

"Potter!" Snape said sharply.

Potter looked over at him.

"What is the way out?"

"We couldn't find one," Potter said quietly.

Snape's heart sank. He was expecting that, but it still felt as though a Bludger had hit him in the gut. "There's always a way out," he said. He sneered at Potter, but his heart wasn't really in it. "I've dealt with cursed paintings before. Your team obviously wasn't bright enough to figure it."

Potter snorted but didn't say anything.

* * *

Potter looked up from where he was drawing invisible circles onto one of the tables. "We're not married, are we?"

"I don't believe I would have forgotten an event like that," Snape said sarcastically. He sat down on one of the hard benches and resisted the urge to drop his head down on the table. Potter was acting oddly. Everything he knew about Potter told him that Potter wasn't the type to give up. In fact, that was the part of Potter that annoyed him the most. Yet, right now, Potter looked the picture of surrender.

"Least not in your universe," Potter said flatly.

"What on earth are you babbling about, Potter?" Snape said in exasperation.

A small smile appeared on the corner of Potter's mouth. "It's remarkable how much you sound like my Severus."

"Your Severus?" Snape spluttered.

"We started dating a few years after the end of the war," Potter told him. "We were married three years ago. We're... happy." Potter licked his lips. "We have a cottage in the countryside."

All this sounded like some sort of ridiculous child's fantasy to Snape. "The war hasn't ended yet," he said. "The Dark Lord's taken over the Ministry and we have a long hard journey to victory." Snape's lip curled. "The last I heard was that you and your friends disappeared for over a year."

Potter laughed. "Ah yes," he said. "We went camping. But it wasn't for a year. We were only away for a few months until we were captured."

Snape stared. "You went camping?" he repeated. "That makes sense."

Potter pulled himself up straight and looked Snape in the eyes. "Let me tell you what I think happened. Somebody painted a picture of you six or more years ago. Back before the war ended." Snape opened his mouth, but Potter held up a hand. "Let me finish. Then six years later, they cursed the painting and somehow tricked me into it. And now, here we are."

There was a long pause. "You're insane," Snape said. "I'm not a painting."

"Yes, yes, you are," Potter said lightly, sounding almost amused. "You're simply a cursed painting of the real Severus Snape. You're a painting of the real thing."

* * *

Over the next few days, they'd both exhausted all their options for getting out of here. They didn't have access to anything, not that Snape would have trusted any library that was in this Hogwarts. Snape had tried every single spell he could think of. Potter shot spell after spell around the room, but to no avail. Everything they tried just seemed to be absorbed by the walls.

"We're in a painting," Potter said. "Perhaps we have no magic."

Snape narrowed his eyes. "I thought you Gryffindors were supposed to be positive."

Potter shrugged. "Maybe somebody will save us," he said. "Maybe somebody will look into the painting of flowers or fruit and realise that it's cursed."

"That's better," Snape said tiredly. He slumped down and dropped his wand onto the table. Reaching over, he grabbed a piece of fruit and bit down on it. "At least we have food."

"Of course," Potter continued. "We're probably more likely to die in a house fire or something. After all, even when we realised we were dealing with a cursed painting, we still couldn't figure out how to save the kid."

Snape snorted. Potter really wasn't very good at the positivity, and he had some severe doubts about Potter's theory. He wasn't some sort of painting of the real Severus Snape. He'd talked to paintings before. They were merely a shadow of the real thing, and they knew they were paintings. He was _real_. He wasn't made up of canvas and paints. He was flesh and blood, a human being that had been cursed into a painting, just like Potter. In fact, if somebody had to be a painting, why couldn't it be Potter?

* * *

"I just need to wake up," Potter muttered. His eyes looked almost feverish. "If I wake up, you'll be my Severus again and all this will be gone."

Snape sneered. "Wishful thinking." He'd been thinking for the past few days. "You're so positive that it's your world that's real. That you and I are in some sort of relationship and somebody's cursed you into this painting."

Potter's eyes narrowed. "Yes."

"What makes you think that's real?" Snape snorted. "Think about it, Potter. Does the idea of us being in a relationship together sound even remotely plausible? Isn't it far more likely that this is a Dark Lord ploy?"

"Voldemort is dead." Potter ground the words out as though they were bitter acid.

"In your fantasy, perhaps, but in the real world he's very much alive. This is some sort of trap for us. Perhaps you got to Hogwarts after your year of camping, and then you were captured."

"We did get to Hogwarts," Harry said flatly. "That's where we won. And I've already told you. We weren't out of contact for an entire year. That's impossible."

"Think about it," Snape told him. "Is that plausible?" Snape looked around at the dark, freezing corridors around them. "Why else would we be here? Think about it. Why would somebody put you into a cursed painting of me?"

Potter looked up. "You really don't know, do you?"

Snape could feel a shiver run down his spine at the look on Potter's face. It was a look of such longing.

"I miss Severus," Potter said through gritted teeth. "There, are you happy? I miss him. I miss my husband and every day, you're sitting there, looking just like him. This is obviously an attempt to hurt me. To remind me of reality every time I look at you. Do you know what that's like? Sometimes, I forget and I look at you and..."

Snape's breath caught at the back of his throat. "... and?"

Potter laughed bitterly. "What do you think?"

Almost without meaning to, Snape took a step forward. And then another and another, until he was standing next to Potter. He saw Potter stiffen.

"What are you doing?" Potter asked warily.

Snape wasn't sure. "Nothing."

Potter turned his head and looked up. "You even smell like him." He inhaled as though memorising Snape's scent.

Snape shuddered. This shouldn't be happening. He didn't even like the brat. Yet there was something different about the Harry Potter sitting in front of him. It wasn't the same boy he taught at Hogwarts. Whether that was because of the six years that had passed, or because of some sort of Voldemort trickery, Snape wasn't sure.

Potter pushed the bench back as he stood up. "You're not my Severus," he said softly as he looked up.

Snape licked his lips. "I know."

Slowly, Potter lifted his hand and brushed Snape's hair away. It looked like a familiar gesture, one that had been done many times over many years. "But you're close," he murmured. "Close enough."

Snape found himself mesmerised by Potter's lips and the way Potter's tongue seemed to flick over them. Potter looked up and, almost as though by accident, he tilted his head back. Without meaning to, Snape found himself bending over and brushing his lips over Potter's. He meant to pull back immediately. It was obviously a mistake. He wasn't Potter's husband. But then, Potter made a soft noise at the back of his throat and Snape's arms tightened around him automatically.

Hazily, at the back of his mind, Snape thought that he could get used to the feeling of Potter in his arms.

* * *

It was surprising how easily they seemed to fall into a routine. Snape still looked for a way out, but his heart wasn't in the search any longer. There was nothing waiting for him outside. Potter had his Severus, but Snape had nobody. Besides, if Potter was right, there was no outside for him. According to Potter, he was the painting, and if that were true, there would be no escape for him.

But here, he had peace and quiet.

Here, he had Potter, who he was growing rather fond of.

Here, he had everything he had ever wanted.

It was with surprise that Snape realised that he didn't want to leave.

* * *

Snape never liked Hogwarts much. It was the scene of childhood pain and adult responsibilities. He didn't mind being in a painting of Hogwarts though. When Potter stopped jabbering, it was peaceful, and there was nobody there to tell them to be quiet when Potter moaned and begged. Snape especially enjoyed the way Potter squirmed and panted when he was stroked.

Sometimes, Snape would look over at Potter and see that faraway look again. Potter wore that look whenever they talked of getting out of here. They still weren't sure of what world would await them outside of the painting, only that there was a world out there and they couldn't reach it. Potter's eyes took on a sad cast whenever they talked about it, and then he wouldn't look at Snape for days on end.

So Snape was careful not to mention the world outside their Hogwarts. They didn't need anything else, he decided. This was enough for them. Sooner or later, Potter would see that too.

_-fin_


End file.
